


On Gentle Memory

by kearlyn



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Nicky is a Shadowhunter, Post-Canon, Reunions, SH canon diverges after season 2, TOG Mini Bang 2020, ToG-Typical Major Character Death (non-permanent), post movie pre epilogue for TOG, references to past torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28498605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kearlyn/pseuds/kearlyn
Summary: While dismantling Valentine Morgenstern's horrific experiments in the aftermath of his death, Alec and his people discover an amnesiac mundane man marked with a rune and seemingly unable to die. As they struggle to save him from the fate of the Forsaken and find out his identity, thousands of miles away a family of immortals searches frantically for one of their lost members.(In which Nicky loses his memory and becomes a Shadowhunter and his immortal family eventually goes crashing head first into the Shadow World.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 15
Kudos: 69
Collections: The Old Guard Mini Bang 2020





	On Gentle Memory

**Author's Note:**

> When I signed up for the ToG Mini Bang, I had no idea how overwhelmingly busy my life was about to get, so this story is still a work-in-progress. The challenge gave me the opportunity to write something, which I haven't been able to do for ages, and I'm amazingly thankful for that! Stay tuned for more chapters (I have another 3,000 words written to post soon!)
> 
> Happy reading and may 2021 be an infinitely better year than 2020.
> 
> EDIT 1/3: Art from @whoisneville/@nivellesart added to chapter one. <3 It's so beautiful. Seriously. So many thanks for making such amazing art for my story <3 <3 <3

They find the man by following the screaming. They’re searching their fourth of Valentine’s secret safehouses this month. After his death and the death of his son Jonathan, Alec had been determined that there would be no repeat of 20 years earlier. Under his watch, the Circle and its sympathizers would not be allowed to slide unpunished back into the shadows. He’d had his people scouring every bit of information they could find in the man’s safehouses to root out the Circle’s sympathizers and find more and more hidden sites of experimentation and torture.

Between the Council, shaken by the revelation that the Consul was a Circle member, and Imogen Herondale, still grateful for the miraculous survival of her grandson, the Clave hadn’t been willing to argue.

All that has led them here, to a bunker hidden in the mountains of Utah and a tortured scream that they feel down to their souls the minute they cross the threshold. Alec’s hands tighten instinctively around his bow and Jace’s knuckles go white around the hilt of his sword. It’s just the two of them and Magnus today. Clary and Izzy are holding down the fort at the Institute and mediating a negotiation between Luke’s pack and a new werewolf family moving into the city.

Alec directs the team with quick hand signals. The bunker is one of the smaller safehouses they’ve found and they could finish the search quickly if they separated, but Alec can’t risk it. Neither can he risk rushing immediately to the broken screaming still echoing in his ears. Not all of Valentine’s safehouses have been empty of Circle members, and the last thing Alec wants is to rush to save someone only to get ambushed from behind.

The ground floor, built into the side of the mountain, is only three rooms, all empty. The last door opens onto a flight of narrow stairs descending deep into the darkness. Jace takes point, Magnus at his back with magic curled around his fingers. Alec takes his usual position at the end of the line, serving as both rearguard and giving him the height advantage if he needs to shoot.

But nothing comes rushing out at them from the dark. No rogue shadowhunters, no mutated Forsaken, no demons.

The stairs end in a small room dominated by a steel table and a rack of shelves filled with a mixture of chemicals and torture equipment. There are three doors on either side of the room, thick and solid with tiny barred windows and narrow cat flaps at the bottom. The screaming is coming from the last room on the right. Alec signals Magnus and Jace to clear the other rooms, then shoulders his bow and heads for the last door.

The lock is thick and sealed with a glowing rune. Alec’s own rune cancels it out, but there must be some magic on the lock because a second unlocking rune only fizzles out on the surface. He tries a lockpick but has to drop it when it melts moments after being inserted. He grumbles under his breath. They’ll need Magnus for this.

Magnus and Jace are still clearing the rest of the cells, so Alec peers through this cell’s narrow window. There’s no light in the tiny room, and Valentine has thoroughly committed to the dark and gloomy villain aesthetic because the lab is lit equally poorly. Alec can just make out the shape of a person thrashing and screaming on the ground. He winces as their limbs flail and their head smashes against the ground with a dull crack.

“Hey!” he calls. “Hey, we’re here to help.”

The prisoner makes no indication that they heard him. Their head smashes against the ground again and Alec swears.

“Magnus!” he calls.

The warlock is at his side in an instant.

“There’s magic on the lock, I think,” Alec says. “And whatever Valentine’s done…”

The prisoner gives another unearthly shriek.

“We have to get in there,” Alec says.

Magnus nods, lips tight. Alec wishes Magnus didn’t have to see this, knowing the toll it takes on his boyfriend. Most of the victims in Valentine’s cells are downworlders that he’s experimented on, and they rarely arrive in time to save anyone. Alec squeezes Magnus’s arm in support then withdraws his hand as blue fire curls around Magnus’s fingers.

Magnus twists his fingers and his magic curls around the recalcitrant lock. The metal shrieks, trembles, and shatters. Magnus grunts as the slivers of metal clatter to the ground. He waves off Alec’s concern and reaches for the door. The handle glows when he touches it, but with his hands wreathed in blue flame, Magnus drags open the door.

Alec doesn’t hesitate, trusting Magnus to take care of himself and that Jace, who he can feel at his back, will handle anything else. The rank smell of human waste, blood, and sweat fills his nose and clings to the back of his throat as he hurries across the room. As used as he is to death, decay, and blood, it still makes him swallow uncomfortably. 

He drops to his knees at the prisoner’s side. From the broad shoulders, flat chest, and beard, Alec guesses it’s a man. The man’s limbs continue to twitch as he seizes and screams. Alec drags the man partially off the floor so his head slams into Alec’s thighs rather than the ground. He lets the man’s limbs continue to flail, knowing that trying to restrain them could do more damage.

A moment later, Magnus drops to his knees at the man’s side. Alec looks up long enough to see Jace settle himself in the open door, angled just enough to keep most of his attention on the lab but just enough to still see the inside of the cell in case they need help. When Alec looks back, Magnus’s expression is grim. His magic flickers across the man’s body seeking an injury he can heal.

The man gives a strangled, choked off scream, arches violently, and collapses back against Alec’s thighs, still and silent. Alec and Magnus’s eyes meet, even as Alec presses a hand against the man’s throat.

The man’s skin is clammy and no pulse beats under Alec’s fingers. His chest does not rise and no breath wheezes from his split and bloody lips. Magnus’s magic flickers away, fading when it finds no life left to save.

Alec meets Magnus’s gaze. They don’t need words to communicate what they both already know. They were too late. The man is dead.

Magnus pushes to his feet and strides from the cell, hands clenched. Alec bows his head and murmurs the Angel’s prayer for the dead. Whoever this man was, dying at the hands of a monster like Valentine surely makes him worthy of Raziel’s special care.

There is a long painful moment of silence.

Then the body, dead and still and cooling and _definitely_ dead, gasps and blue eyes snap open. His mouth moves and Alec, still blinking away his shock, leans forward.

“Please,” the man whispers, “please, no more.”

“What the hell?” Jace says from the door, his own shock echoing down the bond.

The man jerks, fists lashing out as he tries to escape their grasp. He is strong for a mundane. Especially one who has been imprisoned for who knows how long and was dead 30 seconds ago. Jace lunges across the room to help, barely ducking a surprisingly coordinated fist to the face.

“Magnus!” Alec shouts.

“He was dead,” Jace says, dazed, as Magnus bursts back through the door and drops down at the man’s other side. “He was very definitely dead.”

“How…?” Magnus asks.

Alec shakes his head. He has no explanation.

“Guys…”

They look at Jace, who’s efforts to keep the man from injuring himself or them have dislodged the tattered shirt that barely covers his torso. Inches from his hand, on a patch of grey skin, the Angelic Power rune slowly appears as if drawn by an invisible hand.

As the last line finishes and the gold glow of an active rune shines from his skin, the man begins to scream.

* * *

“You want to do what.” It’s phrased as a question, but Inquisitor Herondale’s flat voice makes it clear that this is more reprimand than anything else.

A year ago, Alec might have been dissuaded by that censure, but a year of war with Valentine, dealing with Clary Fairchild, finding Magnus, and finally, finally, being the Head of the Institute in name as well as deed have changed how he views the Clave and the power it can and _can’t_ wield over him.

“I want to give Valentine’s prisoner a chance to drink from the Mortal Cup,” he repeats, placid but determined.

The Inquisitor is already shaking her head. “That’s what I thought you said, but I sincerely hoped I was mishearing you. What in the heavens makes you think this is something we’d ever agree to?”

“He’s already bearing the angelic rune of power,” Alec says.

The Inquisitor’s head snaps up. “A Forsaken?!” she demands. “You want to expose the Mortal Cup to a Forsaken. Absolutely not.”

“There’s something different about him. About his transformation.” Alec hesitates. The man’s situation is strange—the kind of strange Alec would never normally trust to the Clave. But he has little choice. “The rune kills him, as it does with all mundanes. But before he can change, he comes back.”

“Comes… back?”

“From the dead. I can’t explain it. Magnus can’t explain it. _Nothing_ in the archives explains it. But he dies and comes back. Each time he does, the change into a Forsaken progresses a little farther, but it has not overtaken him yet. Isabelle and Magnus believe that drinking from the Mortal Cup may allow him to become nephilim. And once he is nephilim, the rune will not drive him to death and the transformation may stop.”

“And then we’ll have an immortal shadowhunter whose character and history we know nothing about.”

“Better an immortal shadowhunter than an immortal Forsaken.”

The Inquisitor’s hands still. The expression on her face doesn’t change, but Alec has grown up interpreting the minute shifts of his mother’s mood and Imogen Herondale has nothing on Maryse Lightwood.

He has an in and pushes the point.

“If it goes wrong and he turns out to be a danger to our people, I’d certainly much rather be trying to contain a shadowhunter than a Forsaken. They’re difficult enough to fight when we _can_ kill them. I don’t want to know how we’d fare if we couldn’t, and I certainly don’t want to see what someone like Valentine would do with an immortal, unstoppable weapon like that. I can imagine it though.”

The Inquisitor winces and Alec knows she’s imagining it too.

Their people are still rooting out the last of Valentine’s evil and it will be a long time before they recover from his war. Killing Jonathan before he could fully come into whatever terrible powers Valentine’s experiments had given him had been a stroke of luck. They don’t need another terrible living weapon endangering their people.

The Inquisitor sighs and Alec forces himself not to grin.

“I take your point,” she says.

She looks up and meets Alec’s gaze with her own steely-eyed stare.

“Nevertheless, letting the Mortal Cup leave the protection of Alicante **_again_ ** is a risk. Giving a possibly immortal being the power of our runes is a risk.” She sighs. “It is only **_slightly_ ** less of a risk than allowing the creation of an immortal Forsaken so, Raziel help me, I will allow it.”

She holds up a hand before Alec can speak.

“But, it will be on your head. If this goes wrong, you will take all the blame and face all the consequences.”

“And if it goes right, none of the credit.”

For the first time, Alec sees the Inquisitor’s face crack into a genuine smile.

“You have a very good understanding of Clave politics.”

She draws out a sheet of paper and a quill pen and rapidly drafts and signs a note.

“Here,” she says, handing the note to Alec. “Official permission to take the Mortal Cup to the New York Institute and use it on your immortal man. We will see if Raziel finds him worthy.”

Alec takes the paper, nods, and leaves, his mind already racing ahead to everything he needs to do next.

* * *

This isn’t the first time Alec has held the Mortal Cup, but it feels different this time, vibrating with an energy that buzzes under his skin and through his bones. He trades a nervous look with Jace, knowing that his parabatai feels the echoes of this divine energy. He wants to ask if this is how it feels for Jace and Clary when they wield their gifts.

Later, he thinks, when there isn’t a life hanging in the balance.

On the bed their rune-marked mystery lies still. The rune has taken his life again. It’s happening faster and faster and as Alec steps up to his side, he can see the grey, rough texture of a Foresaken’s skin creeping out from the edges of the man’s shirt. They’re running out of time.

Alec slides his hands under the man’s neck, lowering his jaw and opening his mouth. He’ll have to be quick, catching the man in the few seconds between his revival and when the rune of Angelic Power sparks back to life. With his hands on the man’s skin, Alec can feel the shiver as he gasps back to life. The man’s eyes open. Alec presses the Mortal Cup to his lips and tips glowing gold liquid down his throat.

He swallows, the gasps, arching up off the bed, eyes wide.

Alec backs away. There’s nothing more he can do.

The man gulps for air, body shaking, and Alec thinks it might not be enough. If the seizures begin again, he’ll know they’ve failed.

The man pants for breath, limbs straining against the straps holding him down. The room seems brighter, and Alec realizes that there is a glow coming from the man’s skin. The glow brightens, accompanied by a rumble of sound. Alec thinks he hears the clash of swords and the blare of trumpets, but can’t say for sure. The glow bursts into fiery light and Alec slams his eyes shut, flinching away. Burned into the back of eyelids is the image of a man lit by a golden halo and framed by glowing wings.

Finally, the glow fades and the sound dies and Alec risks opening his eyes. The room looks the same as always, showing no evidence of what it has just witnessed. The man lies still and silent on the bed.

Alec is at his side in two steps. At first, he thinks the man is dead. His blue eyes are wide and it takes a moment before Alec sees his chest moving. He feels a burst of relief. The man made it through, and if the light show was anything to go by, the Clave has just gained a powerful shadowhunter.

“By the Angel,” Izzy whispers, stepping up to the other side of the bed.

Alec glances towards her and finds her gaze locked on the exposed skin of the man’s arms and legs. Runes in glittering gold are spiralling into being, drawn by a dozen invisible hands.

A smile tugs at the corners of Alec’s mouth. Yes, he thinks, this new shadowhunter will be something special indeed.

* * *

_He dreams. Somewhere along the way, the endless agony has stopped. It still echoes in his bones, but the roaring inferno lighting up his every nerve has become the soothing embers of a campfire that keeps you warm in the cold night and calls for friends to sit around and share stories._

_He has good feelings about campfires._

_He doesn’t know why._

_In his dream, he sits before one, darkness wrapped around him and a canopy of stars overhead._

_There is another man there, sitting across the fire, brown eyes glittering under dark curls above a smiling mouth. He knows this man. He knows every contour of his face, the rise and fall of his voice in a dozen tongues, his laughter, his anger, his love._

_He does not know this man. He could not say where or when they met. He could not describe the place of this man in his life beyond that his heart sings for him. He does not know his name._

_“Who are you?” he tries to ask, but the words come as if through water and if the man answers, it is lost the wind._

* * *

It’s been three days since their immortal mystery man drank from the Mortal Cup and joined the ranks of the nephilim. Alec has left him mostly in Clary and Izzy’s capable hands: Izzy has the medical knowledge to get him back on his feet and the warm confidence to set anyone at ease and Clary, of all of them, knows best what it’s like to tumble into a strange and wild new world.

Still, Alec sees the man regularly, often encountering him late in the evenings, curled in the back of the library with a book and a wistful, lost expression. Alec knows the feeling and they have become silent reading companions.

This is where Alec finds him after the last of the day’s paperwork has been filed and he’s left Jace overseeing the evening patrols.

The man is curled up in a seat by the window. There’s a book on his lap, but he’s not reading it, staring instead out the window and the raindrops that the evening’s light drizzle is leaving on the glass. Alec glances at his book as he settles down across from the man. It’s not one of the Institute’s; the pages are too white and the clashing pastel colors of the cover would never be found on the Institute’s leather-bound tomes.

It’s a baby name book.

“Find something familiar yet?” Alec asks.

The man sighs and turns away from the window.

“Some,” he says, “but nothing that feels perfect.”

Alec grimaces in sympathy. That has been the sentiment of the past few days as they tried to find out anything about the man’s identity. He had no memory and could only tell them things that felt familiar. Unfortunately, those things that were often too wildly divergent and in some cases outright contradictory to help them figure out his past. Whoever he was, the memories of his past seem firmly gone; not even the Silent Brothers or the best of Magnus’s magic have unearthed anything.

“I’m sorry,” Alec offers, not for the first time. He can’t imagine losing everything he knows about himself.

The man shrugs. “It is what it is,” he says. The corner of his mouth lifts in a wry smile. “It could have been worse.”

Alec smiles back and agrees. There’s no telling how close they came to losing this man to the fate of the Forsaken, and Alec is surprised at how quickly the idea of losing him has become painful. It’s the same feeling he got when Jace joined the family and Alec is secretly delighted to have the Lightwood’s grow once more.

“We’re glad you’re here,” he says, “and however long it takes, we’ll help you find your past.”

The man smiles, but his eyes are sad. “Yet we cannot dwell forever in what is gone. I think I am meant to do something to help, yes?”

“You don’t have to fight demons yet,” Alec says, “but, yes, eventually the Clave will demand your service.”

“And so the work goes on.”

They lapse into comfortable silence. There are things Alec could say, but he feels like the man is coming to a decision.

“Nico,” the man says finally.

At Alec’s raised eyebrow, he taps the cover of the book. “I do not think it is quite right, but it still feels like me.”

The man—Nico—straightens, putting the book aside and meeting Alec’s gaze with a firm expression on his face.

“I am Nico and it is time for me to learn this world I live in and these people who are my people.”

Alec smiles, stands, and extends a hand to pull Nico to his feet.

“Welcome to the New York Institute,” he says. “Let’s get started.”

art by [@whoisneville](https://whoisnivelle.tumblr.com/)/[@nivellesart](https://nivellesart.tumblr.com/) on tumblr [here](https://nivellesart.tumblr.com/post/639195846931513344/nicky-as-shadowhunter-for-thekearlyn-s-fic-on)


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